Indeed. And every time they do fudge that data and they're caught, they reduce the amount of trust we have in science as a whole. Which is hardly good.
Another problem that I see is part of the legal system, where it's possible to slow any action to a crawl by making the endless arguments about the edges of difficult data while making it look like you're being reasonable. Some science gets really complex, to the point where judges and juries can't make sense of the outcome. Companies can always say they're starting a 1 million dollar blue ribbion panel to further explore an issue that is really settled science and it looks like they're doing something- the Tobacco companies are a fine example here, doing this dance for decades until their internal documents were discovered.
Of course, it works in government too, where issue advocates can support legislators beliefs that this or that regulation is critical and prove that there's no way to change it without irreperable harm. Even if its not working _now_ it will surely start working in a year or decade or two or three, and any other plan will be immesurably worse.
A web-friend of ours has a job as a scientist for the house of commons - his job is to provide non-partisan, purely fact based analysis of science to any MP who asks for it. The jobs in that department are funded regardless of whose in power, the MPs don't have control of hiring issues and the directors aren't allowed to hire based on political purposes. He might not always get called on when science is an issue, but it does act as a road block from slanted science overriding real science. I wonder if we could insititue something like that here.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 02:47 pm (UTC)Another problem that I see is part of the legal system, where it's possible to slow any action to a crawl by making the endless arguments about the edges of difficult data while making it look like you're being reasonable. Some science gets really complex, to the point where judges and juries can't make sense of the outcome. Companies can always say they're starting a 1 million dollar blue ribbion panel to further explore an issue that is really settled science and it looks like they're doing something- the Tobacco companies are a fine example here, doing this dance for decades until their internal documents were discovered.
Of course, it works in government too, where issue advocates can support legislators beliefs that this or that regulation is critical and prove that there's no way to change it without irreperable harm. Even if its not working _now_ it will surely start working in a year or decade or two or three, and any other plan will be immesurably worse.
A web-friend of ours has a job as a scientist for the house of commons - his job is to provide non-partisan, purely fact based analysis of science to any MP who asks for it. The jobs in that department are funded regardless of whose in power, the MPs don't have control of hiring issues and the directors aren't allowed to hire based on political purposes. He might not always get called on when science is an issue, but it does act as a road block from slanted science overriding real science. I wonder if we could insititue something like that here.